Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#71

Post by giancarlostoro » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 11:23 AM UTC

pteraspidomorph wrote: post #38

srbby wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Font is too big.

It's very pleasant on QHD. I agree that they probably should have a different sheet for lower resolutions.

This is what kills me about web developers of 2017-2019 (maybe farther back to 2015 or 2016?). We had this awesome hype about supporting mobile resolutions with CSS years ago but now it seems like nobody accounts for the various screen form factors available when designing websites.

Like those sites with the overly huge logos that look ridiculous and annoying on 1080p but I'm sure on 2k and higher they look fine. I don't want to scroll down an entire page worth of scrolling to read your article, it should be immediately available.

Thankfully there's Firefox's Reader Mode.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#72

Post by navigatesol » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 11:23 AM UTC

jakobegger wrote: post #16

I think the GDPR is a good opportunity to reflect how much tracking we really need. Tracking has become so ubiquitous, it's become the default to put Google Analytics on a site, to put a tracking pixel into every email, to personalize every link we send out... But so much of that tracking isn't really necessary. I've stopped tracking website visitors and stopped including tracking pixels in emails a few years ago, an…

>So, I guess I won't know if 10% open my marketing emails or 50%. But who cares? I wouldn't even know what to do with the information anyway.

So you were tracking people without even needing the information? Why?

>I'd rather focus on making my product better.

Yeah, analytics are useless for that. Use your gut! Everyone knows that's better than using data.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#73

Post by rypskar » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 11:24 AM UTC

arielm wrote: post #41

tom_mellior wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, I guess I won't know if 10% open my marketing emails or 50%. You didn't know before either since many mail programs block tracking pixels. This was always garbage data to a large extent.

Gmail doesn’t (kind of), and that’s a big enough slice of email users these days...

Doesn't gmail load images when the email get to the server and not when the email is opened? (That is at least what some who know more about email than I do say) So the only thing tracking pixel really have shown is if the user uses gmail or not

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#74

Post by giancarlostoro » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 11:24 AM UTC

satanspastaroll wrote: post #69

giancarlostoro wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While spammers may have a problem, people don't. Marketing spammers maybe, but now scammers and malware spammers have the floor instead. Laws only stop the law abiding citizens from doing their thing, it sure doesn't stop the criminals from.... being criminals.

Not having marketing spammers is still better than having spammers and scammers

There's usually an unsubscribe button for marketing spam, and if there isn't I usually block their email. You can't do that with scammers / illegal spam.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#75

Post by iamacyborg » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 11:24 AM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #66

microcolonel wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What surprises me more is that tracking pixels even work anymore. What email clients don't bother to filter them out?

Do any email clients block tracking pixels? My understanding is that they block images by default but if you choose to view them you will load all the tracking pixels.

Article author here - Tracking pixels aren't blocked per se in most email clients but you're correct that they rely on images being loaded.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#76

Post by dessant » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 11:24 AM UTC

microcolonel wrote: post #57

isostatic wrote: post #6

"This stressed out a lot of email marketers, who quite rightly realised that the new regulations would have a significant effect on their ability to acquire and market to customers via their email address" "The overwhelming majority of commercial email sent today contains tracking pixels and tracking links, these are used to uniquely identify individuals so that opens and clicks can be correctly attributed to them" G…

What surprises me more is that tracking pixels even work anymore. What email clients don't bother to filter them out?

Gmail, among others. Gmail proxies remote content when the email is opened, so the IP address of the user is not disclosed, but the time and number of opens can be tracked.

Google could proxy and cache remote content in emails when they are accepted by Gmail servers, and that would render Gmail users untrackable by third-parties.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#77

Post by satanspastaroll » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 11:24 AM UTC

ericb wrote: post #65

aiCeivi9 wrote: post #3

There is the Email Industry - that is the problem.

Just because you associate emails with spam doesn't solve the problem of every charity, business, church, school and group needing to communicate with large numbers of email subscribers. Like anything, bad actors make it worse.

No "industry" is needed for pub/sub news. The GDPR only affects the companies abusing current system for unsoliticed advertising

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#78

Post by microcolonel » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 11:24 AM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #66

microcolonel wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What surprises me more is that tracking pixels even work anymore. What email clients don't bother to filter them out?

Do any email clients block tracking pixels? My understanding is that they block images by default but if you choose to view them you will load all the tracking pixels.

I guess I'm just not that familiar with HTML email anymore in general, and when I do read it I generally do not have images regardless.

I always assumed that disabling 1x1px images would be first on the list of mitigations against this technique. I was under the impression that email clients, in addition to an option to block images in general (usually on by default for an address or origin), generally prevented the loading of remote images. Embedding images directly into emails is fine, isn't it?

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#79

Post by satanspastaroll » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 11:25 AM UTC

maccard wrote: post #70

Angostura wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has lead to compulsory acceptance. No. It leads to non-acceptance by default. If you are seeing forms where you are opted in to data capture by default that isn't a core part of the service, that's a breach.

Great, so how do we fix that and stop them doing it?

We generally fine them big for breaking it, and may forbid them from doing business at all if they keep breaking it

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#80

Post by giancarlostoro » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 11:27 AM UTC

iamacyborg wrote: post #75

giancarlostoro wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do any email clients block tracking pixels? My understanding is that they block images by default but if you choose to view them you will load all the tracking pixels.

Article author here - Tracking pixels aren't blocked per se in most email clients but you're correct that they rely on images being loaded.

Thanks for answering, it's curious enough that I'm now looking into Thunderbird plugins to see if there's one to block (or try to) tracking pixels.